Jenga @ Home
During your time at home, while social distancing and staying safe due to CoronaVirus pandemic, feel free to try out some of our Jenga @ home projects.
These Jenga @ Home projects give a fantastic opportunity to collaborate, learn and have fun during these times. It will build your creative, confidence and change making skills!
We will be hosting weekly challenges for you to try out at home. Every week, you will get a chance to witness our teacher try out an experiment and you can too! Follow our website and social media pages for more details of how you can participate!
Check out some of our
Jenga@home Projects
Please send us pictures and videos of the results of your project experiment, through info[at]jengahub.com or share it with us through the hashtag #Jenganyumbani #Jengaathome
Drop Project
The egg drop is a classic science project that kids will love. Can you design a system that will protect an egg from a fall? Give it a try and find out.
Use items from around the house to build something that will prevent eggs smashing all over the ground.
Can you protect a falling egg?
What you’ll need:
● Eggs
● Paper towels
Build your egg protectors from resources such as:
● Plastic straws
● Popsicle sticks
● Tape
● Recycled paper
● Glue
● Plastic bags
● Boxes
● Used material
Plastic containers
The aim:
● Your goal is simple, design and build a system that will protect an egg from a 1 metre (3.3 feet) drop. Eggs that smash or crack fail the test while eggs that survive without a scratch pass!
Getting started:
You need to create something that can absorb the energy the egg gathers as it accelerates towards the ground. A hard surface will crack the egg so you have to think carefully about how you can protect it. Something that will cushion the egg at the end of its fall is a good place to start, you want the egg to decelerate slowly so it doesn’t crack or smash all over the ground. You’ll need to run a few trials so have some eggs ready as guinea pigs, those that don’t survive will at least be comforted knowing they were smashed for a good cause, and if not, you can at least have scrambled eggs for dinner right?
Let younger kids enjoy building a robot from everyday household items, it’s lots of fun and is sure to keep their attention.
What you’ll need:
● Useful materials include soft drink lids, old boxes, tin foil, ice cream containers, old clothing, various material, straws, paper and crayons.
General instructions:
● You’ll need quite a lot of materials (depending on how many children will be taking part). A good idea is to start off with unused cardboard boxes and go from there. The children can glue or tape boxes together to form the general shape of a robot before attaching other items to complete the project. There is room for a wide variety of ideas on this project so if you have an idea that you think will work then give it a go!
Build a robot using electronics equipment or a robotics kit set
For older groups of children you can try a robot building project using real electronics equipment or a robotics kit set.
What you’ll need:
● There are a number of great robotics kit sets out there as well as the always dependable Lego Mindstorms NXT which offers plenty of scope for robot building challenges.
General instructions:
● Rather than just letting them build any type of robot, give them a fun challenge which can serve as the inspiration behind the design of their robot as well as the focus of any program they make using a computer. This challenge could involve a race of some type, robots that use sensors to find something, a test of strength or building a robot that responds to some form of human input. As well as designing and building their robot, students will have to think about how they will program it as well.
● This project can be further developed into a great science fair project focusing on technology. You could research what kind of artificial intelligence your robot is capable of as well as any physical limitations it has that stop it from performing required tasks.
Coke/Pepsi and Mentos
PART 1: The Experiment
What you’ll need:
● Mentos candy
● A 1.5L plastic bottle of Coca-Cola or Pepsi soda
Choice of environment: This experiment should be carried out outside the house on a clean table or in a large clear space with no water-sensitive devices and material nearby.
● Point to note: The experiment can get really messy!
Reflective questions:
● What do you think would happen if we put Mentos candy in soda?
Instructions:
Open the soda bottle and put about seven Mentos in the coke or Pepsi soda.
Very quickly take a few steps back but keep your eyes on the soda bottle. What do you observe?
Deductions/thoughts
● Encourage the learner to make deductions based on the experiment.
Questions
At this stage, ask your child a few probing questions of your choice to see if what the child has observed is similar to yours.
PART 2: The Science (Nucleation)
● Observation: A jet of soda bursts out of the soda bottle!
Explanation: When soda is being made, a lot of carbon dioxide gas is pumped into the soda bottles. The carbon dioxide adds the pleasant flavour to the soda and is the reason for the sharp tingling sensation when you drink.
Some of the carbon dioxide gas dissolves into the soda and some doesn’t. The trapped gas is constantly looking for an escape route out of the bottle. So, it clings onto anything it comes across in the bottle forming tiny air bubbles.
You can dip your finger into a glass containing soda to visualize this further.
You will see bubbles forming around your finger.
When Mentos candy is thrown into the soda bottle, the carbon dioxide gas bubbles cling onto the tiny pits on the textured Mentos candy surface. As more carbon dioxide gas accumulates around the candy, the gas becomes more buoyant. It then rushes out of the bottle forcing all the soda in its way to rise as well. This forms a giant geyser that shoots out of the bottle.
So, What is Nucleation?
Very simply, nucleation is the process through which matter begins changing from one state to another. In this case, it is the rapid formation of carbon dioxide gas bubbles on and around the thousands of small holes and. pits on the surface of the Mentos candy.
Applications: You can use the experiment to compare the level of carbon dioxide pumped into different brands of soda.
Key words: geyser, carbon dioxide, nucleation, bubbles, bouyant, Mentos.
Please use the hashtag #JengaAtHome and tag our social media accounts @jengahub so we can see your awesome experiments and have other people join the discussion!
Check out some additional resources from our partners here that you can use, to keep practising your coding, robotics and making at home; Stay Safe!
www.code.org
www.scratch.org
www.designathon.nl/swahili
www.designathon.nl/corona
“If we teach today as we taught yesterday,
we rob our children of tomorrow”
John Dewey